Some computer font formats, such as OpenType, offer font designers a repertoire of rich and sophisticated typographic features. These typographic features provide font designers with advanced typographic controls for their font designs, allowing for a large number of different glyphs for each character in a font. As a result, the number of fonts that support these typographic features has grown exponentially.
Despite the adoption of these typographic features by font designers, software applications offering typesetting capabilities have failed to provide users with an easy and intuitive way to apply these typographic features for stylizing text when creating content. Most users are not even aware of the existence of such typographic features in applications. This is because the typographic features are embedded deeply inside applications with complex ways of accessing the capabilities. A user has to navigate through series of menus, drop down boxes, or other navigational tools to find the typographic features. As such, it is a confusing and time consuming task to apply typographic features. This discourages users from using these powerful features, and as a result, many users won't bother.
Even if a user does navigate through the menus or drop down boxes, the various options are not explained. Users are not provided with any understanding regarding how the typographic features will impact the appearance of the text. There is no visual information or preview available so users are not sure how the text will look after applying a particular typographic feature. For at least these reasons, there are numerous occasions where users won't/aren't able to use the capabilities of these powerful typographic features which would help them better stylize their text and create a better design.